Norway

Winchester

So we’ve just moved into our new home in Winchester. It is an old row house on three levels and conveniently located in the middle of town. While not absolutely gorgeous, it does have some charm and some decorative features, as well as honey coloured floor boards and a garden, albeit in need of some love, out the back.

I initially thought that it was quite a bit bigger than our apartment in Germany, but by the time the furniture was delivered, the space available seemed to have shrunk. And at this point I don’t quite know where we are going to put all our stuff, especially when another 40 boxes arrive from Australia. Compared with Germany and the US, the key thing we are missing is a basement in which to store miscellaneous junk and bikes. It actually feels as though we have gone through progressive stages of shrinkage during our moves and have now reached a terminus: a small row house with no basement or garage.

Aside from space issues though, the main thing that I am noticing is just how pleasant this move feels. Everyone speaks English and I don’t have to feel like a goose whenever I head out to a store to buy a widget. We have a car which dramatically simplifies buying supplies and transport in general – no more riding ten kilometers to simply replace a portable hard drive. English culture is also very similar to Australian and having a completely separate, well appointed, cottage to which we can escape at the end of the day is just brilliant.

I’m crossing my fingers that this all lasts….

Huckle Cottage

Last week we moved we moved out of our apartment in Rostock, packed our bags and took a one-way flight to England. We are now staying in a really lovely cottage on the edge of the New Forest, about 30 minutes Southwest from Winchester, while we wait for our furniture, clothes and our other possessions to arrive from Germany.

As moves go, this one really wasn’t too bad. I didn’t have to worry about working whilst moving, we had planned out the move months in advance, and had already done a first visit to rent a house, get a mobile phone and open a bank account. We even, luxury of luxuries, had the moving company pack our stuff for us. Of course, things still happen, so our move was leavened with Brienna getting quite sick (bronchitis, we think), and a certain amount of inevitable grumpiness all-around, but frankly, we got off pretty lightly.

And sitting out in a gorgeous little cottage near Fordingbridge, in a very cozy living room with a roaring open fire is not at all a bad way to start off life in a new country. It also gives me time to get used to living in England, which while great, is simply something I never had in my vague set of life goals.

From what we have seen so far, the New Forest mostly seems to consist of low rolling hills, mostly covered in gorse and holly, with wild, or at least un-owned, ponies a very common sight. The actual forest part of the park looks the most intriguing to me, with almost prehistoric looking trees, shrouded in mist, although we haven’t ventured into them yet. I did take Aralyn and Caeden on walk into another small forest near our cottage, and that was a blast. We wandered around looking for sprites and animals and got utterly muddy, my fault for not bringing wellingtons along, not that we had any given we arrived with only two suitcases.

Sunset

While we were in Australia over the holidays we had some amazing sunsets from the back of my parent's house in Castlemaine.

Obviously, heading off to the antipodes during the middle of the Northern winter is quite a contrast in weather. Fortunately, though it wasn't nearly as bad as being in Wisconsin.

Ireland's Financial Crisis

This is, by far, the best explanation I've read of Ireland's financial crisis. The Irish government and regulators were completely asleep, with the result that they've utterly bankrupted their nation. I almost wish I believed in God, so that there would be hell waiting for those responsible.

Home

When I was little we would often make trips up to Sydney to see our extended family. It was almost always fun, from being spoiled by the grandparents to playing with our cousins, who conveniently owned a swimming pool. I am very grateful that my parents took us there so regularly, as it meant that both my brother and I built a good, enduring connection with our cousins.

But, being a homebody by nature, there was nothing like seeing the telecom tower on top of Black Mountain as you started to drive back down into the Canberra valley. It meant we were home.

Faces

Caeden really likes to make funny faces. It is something he picked up at Waldermarhof as he definitely didn't get it at home. It is sometimes annoying, but also sometimes downright hilarious, and although we don't want him doing it all the time, it is very hard to not smile at some of his antics.

I took these photos at Dickson Swimming Pool in Canberra over the summer. My brother and I went there with dad during our summer holidays so it was just great to do the same thing with Aralyn and Caeden.

Right now Caeden is going through a hyper-verbal phase and just does not stop talking. He's a kind of fun mix of solo, hands-on, engineering curiosity with extreme, left-handed and left-brained loquaciousness during dinner time.

Countdown

We are now in the last few weeks of living in Rostock before we head off to Winchester. As normal, after living here for two or so years this place feels like home, despite the fact that I still cannot speak German. Aralyn and Caeden definitely feel that Rostock is home and I am wondering how they will feel once they realize that we are not coming back, at least not permanently.

I am really going to miss this little town by the Baltic. I've made some very close friends here and its been a really interesting and beautiful place to spend some time. There's something wild, unspoilt and wonderful about the stormy Baltic coast, even if it often feels as though you are living in the middle of cloud.

Aralyn had her last day of school last Friday and it was so poignant to watch all the goodbyes with her friends. We gave Frau P a gorgeous big hydrangea and little potted flowers to Frau S, Frau R and Frau ? as well as to Aralyn's friends I and F. F gave Aralyn two beautiful stuffed elephants that she and her mother had made as gifts for Aralyn and Caeden. The entire class made a goodbye poster, with each child contributing a paper hand and photo covered in good wishes that was then stuck to the poster. I think this was all orchestrated while we were on holiday in Australia over the Christmas break.

I brought my camera and, in an expected turn of good luck, managed to take photos of nearly all of Aralyn's friends. Here she is with I, her best friend:

Here is Frau P and Frau S with Aralyn. Both were lovely teachers and we are all going to miss them. I really liked their little classroom: it was well organized and structured, but full of love, fun and laughter.

Here F and L are lifting Aralyn up. Being one of the smallest kids, her friends were often giving her friendly lifts along with hugs.

And here's Aralyn with a group of friends, including E, who really took Aralyn under her wing when she started school. It was a really great way for her to start school and I think it helped make her feel very welcome.

And here's Aralyn and M.

Brienna and I are thinking of coming back to Rostock in August and I hope we do. It would be great for Aralyn and Caeden to practice their German, and really wonderful to see our friends again.

Germany and the Financial Crisis

While there have been ups and downs, in general I have liked living in Germany for the last two-and-a-half years. I’ve made some great friends and seen more of Europe than I had ever seen before. It has also been fascinating to compare my experiences living in Australia and the US, with that of living in Germany. Mostly I have been really impressed. Germany seems to be well run and well governed, the trains, roads and airports are all modern, the countryside gorgeous and driving around I am always astounded at how many futuristic wind turbines you see.

We moved over to Germany just before the global financial crisis struck and, in general, Germany seems to have fared quite well. Credit is much harder to get in Germany and nearly everyone I know either has no credit cards or is forced to pay them off monthly. There also seems to have been a much smaller housing bubble, possibly because it is just more common, and quite acceptable, to rent. The German system to deal with unemployment, Kurzarbeit, seems to have been extremely well thought out and I like the ideas underpinning the system. People work hard and take their jobs seriously, but they also have a lot of fun, at least around where I live.

So it is not surprising that the German government has not been easily influenced by the US government in terms of stimulus spending, nor particularly backwards in terms of declaring the German economic model to be a success.

However, there are a couple of flies in this particular ointment. A number of them have been discussed in the newspapers, such as whether the German model is actually transferable to other countries, and what would happen if it indeed it was attempted widely, but one that doesn’t get mentioned is the role of the German banks in facilitating property bubbles across Europe.

Ireland is one of the countries that did have a huge property bubble, and has had a correspondingly devastating economic readjustment. And while it appears that the Irish government badly managed, the state was nonetheless running a surplus and did not have a significant amount of debt. All that changed though when the newly insolvent private banks (that had financed the unsustainable property developments) had their debts guaranteed by the Irish government. Virtually overnight, the Irish people assumed the debts of failed investors and banks, as it was somehow deemed critical that investors ought not to be liable for the risks that they took in search of private profit.

Kevin O'Rourke writes about this in his Letter from Dublin at Euro Intelligence and Paul Krugman has written a lot comparing Iceland, where no such guarantees were made, with Ireland. Not surprisingly, Iceland is now doing substantially better than Ireland.

The part that caught my eye in O'Rourke’s article is how EU officials effectively told the Irish government that the owners of the Irish property debt should not be liable for their loses, and would be made whole by the people of Ireland. I actually can’t get my head around how the Irish government actually agreed to this, if indeed they had a choice. After all, it is the responsibility of the government to look after the interests of the people, not the investors that would surely not have shared their expected, private, profits. At some point in the future it will be interesting to read an inside scoop of exactly how this was all negotiated, what was threatened and what was offered.

And who exactly are the owners of the Irish property debt? If the situation in Greece is any guide, German and French banks will account for the majority of the proportion, although I have not yet seen any articles on this topic. And, as with Greece, a very obvious question that arises is what on earth were the solid, conservative German banks doing lending so much money for such shaky property deals? Did they actually do due diligence? Or where they so caught up in the frenzy for market share that by the time that they realized their actual position, that to pull back would have undermined their own financial footing?

Ultimately, what it looks like to me is that the Irish people are being forced to repay German and French banks to preserve their financial future. Now, if one or two large German and French banks collapsed due to bad debts in Greece, Ireland, Portugal or Spain, the economic results could be truly horrendous, so I can certainly see that perspective. And no doubt, a lot of policy makers and bankers in Berlin and Paris are desperately hoping that with time the property market comes back, some portion of bad debt becomes good and that the fiscal position of banks and European Governments edges back into the black. I just can’t escape the feeling that the system has gone horribly wrong if so much pain has to be inflicted on the Irish people, as well as many others – to save German and French banks.

Christmas Party

The MPI had a Christmas party this year, and for once I was not travelling and able to go. It was quite a lot of fun, at least as can be had with two cherubs in tow and some degree of responsibility to try and maintain. It was also a great chance to grab some shots of the different folks at the MPI. The photo below shows Brienna with J.

The photo below shows N on the left and D on the right, I'm not sure about the woman in the middle. Brienna has done a lot of work with N on various projects and thoroughly enjoyed the collaboration - hopefully it can continue when we head over to the UK.

The photo below shows D with her husband F and their cute little girl. They are from Mexico and I had an interesting, if sad conversation with F about the "War on Drugs" and its effects on their country. Sadly, I can't really see how the situation in Mexico can really improve until this absurd "war" ends, which at the present time is nowhere in sight.

And of course, no Christmas party would be complete with a visit from der Weihnachtsmann, in this case, D. D, and his wife I, have been a really great addition to the social scene, organizing a bunch of fun gatherings at their place, including a Halloween party where D had the most amazing tiger costume. I think it took Aralyn at least five to minutes to really understand that it was D underneath the stripes, whiskers and tail. This time she wasn't so easily taken in.